Summer Mailbag: Bad TV Theme Songs, Historical Events As Miniseries, and Book Recs

Chris and Andy open up the mailbag to answer listener questions on the ‘Task’ and ‘Mare of Easttown’ shared universe, LeBron James joining the Sixers, the trend of bad TV theme songs, the truth behind the success of ‘Widow’s Bay,’ their favorite books of the year, and much more (5:16). Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of The Watch and so much more! Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producers: Kaya McMullen and Kai Grady Studio Production: Sarah Reddy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu is now streaming on Disney+

• 0:05Speaker 01

  What are you waiting for? Hop on.

• 0:08Speaker 00

  The must-see galactic adventure comes home on Disney+

• 0:12Speaker 01

  This is the way. Our only chance is to work together.

• 0:17Speaker 01

  I like this kid. Always wear your seatbelt.

• 0:22Speaker 00

  Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu now streaming on Disney+ Rated PG-13.

• 0:35Speaker 02

  I need supports to have to clear the room.

• 0:38Chris Ryan?

  Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at TheRinger.com. And joining me in the studio as always, it's Andy Greenwald.

• 0:49Andy Greenwald?

  Oh.

• 0:50Chris Ryan?

  Well, we don't have a show that we're talking about today, or any one given show. We don't have news that we're doing today. Today's a mailbag episode.

• 0:56Andy Greenwald?

  Evergreen.

• 0:57Chris Ryan?

  I will be in parts unknown when we're, this is airing, so we thought we would do a little summer mailbag.

• 1:04Andy Greenwald?

  That's fun, because the next show will also be about parts unknown.

• 1:07Chris Ryan?

  That's exactly right, brother.

• 1:08Andy Greenwald?

  Good at this.

• 1:09Chris Ryan?

  Andy, it's great to see you. Today, we have a lovely mailbag from our listeners who contacted us through Instagram, where they can hit us up at thewatchpod underscore. And also through email, where they can write us at thewatch at spotify.com.

• 1:23Andy Greenwald?

  Before we get into the mailbag, which was very good, do you think we should do any, like, just future casting? Or future proofing of this podcast? Because we're recording this the week before it will post, so, for example, we could both react with surprise and delight at the revelation that Sadie Sink is playing Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Like, I, that was bold.

• 1:48Chris Ryan?

  That the new MCU is in fact The Supremes and that...

• 1:53Andy Greenwald?

  It was shocking that they are actually re-

• 1:54Chris Ryan?

  Somehow Thurgood Marshall has returned.

• 1:57Andy Greenwald?

  That the whole project is to actually reboot a stable 90s political culture.

• 2:01Chris Ryan?

  Oh, sure. Yeah.

• 2:04Chris Ryan?

  Who will stop supervillain Strom Thurmond this time?

• 2:09Chris Ryan?

  That would be really an interesting pivot. I do feel a little bit bad. So this is going up Monday, the previous Monday show. I feel like I was a little hostile towards Comic-Con.

• 2:20Andy Greenwald?

  You were?

• 2:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. I feel like, I mean, I just, I wasn't trying to yuck anyone's yum or harsh anybody's buzz.

• 2:26Andy Greenwald?

  Who's got to you?

• 2:27Chris Ryan?

  I just feel like I want, you know, like, I just, I know that people, like, I know that there are some still, like, really sincere fans of the MCU and I, I, I sometimes need to stress the fact that you and I are not coming at this from, like, jocks in the cafeteria's perspective.

• 2:41Andy Greenwald?

  Speak for yourself. Okay?

• 2:44Chris Ryan?

  But more from, like, a, we want better from it perspective.

• 2:48Andy Greenwald?

  Now, I hear that. I do want to reflect for the record that I was on the JV tennis team.

• 2:54Chris Ryan?

  Yes, that's true.

• 2:54Andy Greenwald?

  So, that's fine. I don't think I was negative enough about it.

• 2:58Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:58Andy Greenwald?

  So I think that we should be choosing a different track here.

• 3:01Chris Ryan?

  Um, we can jump into the questions whenever you want, but yeah, like, basically, insert Spider-Man: Brand New Day take here.

• 3:10Chris Ryan?

  Insert Lioness Season 3 take there.

• 3:13Andy Greenwald?

  Do you want to just guess?

• 3:14Chris Ryan?

  I don't think it, it comes out, I believe, August 2nd or something like that.

• 3:18Andy Greenwald?

  What is your pre-take?

• 3:19Chris Ryan?

  Well, it's something the enemy is within.

• 3:22Andy Greenwald?

  What? It's almost as if they've taken everything away from her.

• 3:25Chris Ryan?

  And it's sort of like Lioness, heal thyself.

• 3:27Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, no. There's a problem in the pride.

• 3:29Chris Ryan?

  Well, did you see that the trailers are like, uh,

• 3:31Andy Greenwald?

  No, I'm gonna stop you there. No.

• 3:33Chris Ryan?

  It's Joe and her husband in therapy together, which I thought might appeal to you.

• 3:37Andy Greenwald?

  I'm interested. Okay. Hold on. How much of the show is that?

• 3:40Chris Ryan?

  As a Paul Mazursky fan that you are.

• 3:42Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think they bring, like, giant rifles into therapy?

• 3:46Chris Ryan?

  Can I tell you something?

• 3:47Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 3:47Chris Ryan?

  If Lioness was just couples counseling, I would be out.

• 3:50Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 3:51Chris Ryan?

  I don't think that's worth sharing in Strengths Live.

• 3:53Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think it was about, like, Lion v Lioness? And it's just about two wild animals, but they're people, and they're trying to figure it out on the Serengeti of an Upper West Side apartment?

• 4:03Chris Ryan?

  I think the idea is that Joe, uh, who is sort of the head of the Lioness program in Lioness-

• 4:09Andy Greenwald?

  This is Zoe Saldana.

• 4:10Chris Ryan?

  Zoe Saldana, is that her trespasses abroad have washed up on domestic shores. You know what I mean? You know? The war at home.

• 4:20Andy Greenwald?

  What would be the limit for you of, of a partner of a wife's international war crimes? If it was, like, understood on your wedding day that Phoebe, like, got up some stuff?

• 4:30Chris Ryan?

  I don't know if it was understood between her, Joe and her husband, though. Played by Dave Anabelle.

• 4:34Andy Greenwald?

  But it's like, as far as I know, and it does sound like the war is now within, so I, I get that.

• 4:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:41Andy Greenwald?

  But from what I understand and what I've seen of the show, she's not ex-

• 4:45Chris Ryan?

  Were you talking, didn't you watch, like, the whole second season with me?

• 4:50Andy Greenwald?

  I maybe, did I tell you that I did?

• 4:52Chris Ryan?

  Or do you only dabble with Lioness? I thought you watched along with me.

• 4:55Andy Greenwald?

  We would have had so much more content if I did.

• 4:57Chris Ryan?

  Oh, okay. Because you were like, this is actually, like, a grotesque-

• 5:01Andy Greenwald?

  I made it through, like, the fourth episode, and I was enjoying Dave Anabelle, like, healing a child's, like, scarred visage, you know, but then-

• 5:09Chris Ryan?

  I think he's a heart surgeon or something.

• 5:10Andy Greenwald?

  Well, that's why he did a bad job. Worried about it. But, but my point is that at least I didn't see her ventilate dudes on American soil. You know what I mean?

• 5:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:21Andy Greenwald?

  So, so do you, I'm just, just hypothetically, like, would you be okay with that?

• 5:27Chris Ryan?

  She does do that.

• 5:28Andy Greenwald?

  Now she does do that?

• 5:29Chris Ryan?

  She has done that. Yes, I believe so.

• 5:31Andy Greenwald?

  I see.

• 5:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:32Andy Greenwald?

  She turns dudes' backs into Gilbert Arenas within the Continental 48?

• 5:36Chris Ryan?

  You giving the most Noah Baumbach toned line reads of, of famous rap lyrics is a really good bit.

• 5:43Andy Greenwald?

  I think it's a good bit for you. Have you noticed that?

• 5:46Chris Ryan?

  You know, a lot of these questions are very Andy, uh, Andy-heavy, Andy-coded. You're a divisive but beloved figure. And, uh,

• 5:53Andy Greenwald?

  Like Sandra Day O'Connor.

• 5:54Chris Ryan?

  Like Sandra Day O'Connor. So let's start with one we got from Instagram from SharonJoy76. So we've had Daddington Andy watch and react to Euphoria.

• 6:03Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 6:03Chris Ryan?

  Weapons and Landman.

• 6:05Andy Greenwald?

  Who a good friend I am.

• 6:06Chris Ryan?

  For, hey, if you want to make some recommendations outside of animated stuff from the, what, 90s, 80s? Where was that from?

• 6:13Andy Greenwald?

  Doesn't matter.

• 6:14Chris Ryan?

  What current Daddington shows or Andy-only faves would Andy get CR to watch and react to on the pod, aside from Spirited Away?

• 6:21Andy Greenwald?

  Which wasn't The Wreck.

• 6:22Chris Ryan?

  And also is, is a bit, like, I recognize the glory and brilliance of Miyazaki and, and animation.

• 6:29Andy Greenwald?

  And Tempopo.

• 6:30Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 6:31Andy Greenwald?

  Which is not animation, but you liked it now.

• 6:33Chris Ryan?

  I do.

• 6:33Andy Greenwald?

  Great question. Thank you. I, I should note that the glory days of Daddington Island are sadly in the past.

• 6:43Chris Ryan?

  Subprime.

• 6:44Andy Greenwald?

  Because the, the children, Chris, they age and they age quickly, and so my younger daughter's animated input is, is really just Simpsons now.

• 6:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:55Andy Greenwald?

  Which is really fun, but my-

• 6:57Chris Ryan?

  The late period Simpsons, right?

• 6:58Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I've said this, like, she is, it's kind of, I feel like there's a little bit of me in this, if I may, because she is dedicated to the project of diving for pearls in seasons 31 through 37.

• 7:10Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 7:11Andy Greenwald?

  And then being like, this one with John Mulaney is kind of funny. And then we watch it, and I'm like, that was kind of funny. But there are actually some very good ones in there. But then last night, we watched, she, we watched two that she recommended, and then I was like, what about, also, we watched this one from the 90s in which Homer adopts a monkey to be his personal helper, and then the monkey becomes an alcoholic.

• 7:32Chris Ryan?

  Uh-huh.

• 7:33Andy Greenwald?

  And she was like, these are much better. So I did feel good about that. But, but anyway, my point is, my 13-year-old, though, is now currently, as we speak, alone at home, just crushing Bridgerton.

• 7:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:44Andy Greenwald?

  So, which I think you've watched, so you could talk to her about that.

• 7:47Chris Ryan?

  I've not watched Bridgerton. I think I watched, like, a couple of episodes of the first season, but, um-

• 7:52Andy Greenwald?

  And Outer Banks. Do you watch Outer Banks?

• 7:53Chris Ryan?

  I watched the first season of Outer Banks. Yes, with my wife.

• 7:56Andy Greenwald?

  Wow, she's, well, you guys should talk. New season coming. Anyway, but I do have a real answer, which is, I, I still think that Bluey is one of the great masterpieces of our time.

• 8:05Chris Ryan?

  I'm just not gonna watch it. I have to be completely honest.

• 8:07Andy Greenwald?

  I, I think this is a mistake. These episodes are seven and a half minutes long.

• 8:10Chris Ryan?

  It's not the, the amount of time the episodes take. It's, I mean, like, I-

• 8:14Andy Greenwald?

  This is a big loss for you.

• 8:15Chris Ryan?

  I, I know it is, but so is not having children, you know?

• 8:21Chris Ryan?

  So there has to be some advantages, you know what I mean?

• 8:24Andy Greenwald?

  But this is a disadvantage.

• 8:25Chris Ryan?

  No, it's, it's like a time-saving, uh, hack.

• 8:29Andy Greenwald?

  I, I'm also realizing, I'm realizing that I've gone about this the wrong way. I foolishly, every few months, come into this studio, and I attack you with a battering ram of, like, animated content, and you resist. And then every so often, will be a reference to some animated project, like that movie Flow, and you'll be like, yeah, I watched that.

• 8:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 8:49Andy Greenwald?

  And I'll be like, why did you watch that? And you will say, my wife wanted to watch the thing about the cat.

• 8:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Is there a cat in Blue?

• 8:56Andy Greenwald?

  It's dogs. That's the conceit.

• 8:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 8:59Andy Greenwald?

  But I now realize I'm talking to the wrong member of the household.

• 9:01Chris Ryan?

  Sure. I mean, if Bluey's about Jimothy, I'm sure she's gonna want to watch it, but like-

• 9:06Andy Greenwald?

  Can I, for the record, state that Phoebe texted me about Jimothy on Sunday morning? I've never said that word out loud, and I have no opinion about it, but Phoebe still wrote to me about it.

• 9:15Chris Ryan?

  Opinion could you have about Jimothy?

• 9:16Andy Greenwald?

  Anti.

• 9:17Chris Ryan?

  Really? Are you just firming?

• 9:19Andy Greenwald?

  I don't even know what it is. What is it?

• 9:21Chris Ryan?

  It's a deformed raccoon. It's a raccoon with a spinal problem.

• 9:24Andy Greenwald?

  Deformed, we don't use that language anymore. We don't use the D-word.

• 9:27Chris Ryan?

  Is that really, is that canceled?

• 9:29Andy Greenwald?

  No. No bat raccoons. It better not be.

• 9:31Chris Ryan?

  Deformed. You can't say something's deformed?

• 9:33Andy Greenwald?

  I just think Jimothy is made in the image of the god that created him, and it's beautiful.

• 9:37Chris Ryan?

  Okay, Metalas. Let's keep rolling.

• 9:40Andy Greenwald?

  So-

• 9:40Chris Ryan?

  All right, so Bluey is my assignment, and it's like 43 seasons, but each episode's five minutes, right?

• 9:45Andy Greenwald?

  It's three seasons. Each episode is seven minutes. But I was like, but the other thing is like-

• 9:49Chris Ryan?

  Three seasons? Seven minutes? How many episodes are there?

• 9:51Andy Greenwald?

  Like 20 per season. You don't have to watch all, it's not serialized.

• 9:54Chris Ryan?

  And next time I'm on a plane, I'll try and bang that out.

• 9:56Andy Greenwald?

  I'll give you two.

• 9:56Chris Ryan?

  There won't be anything cooler than the single guy on an airplane watching Bluey.

• 9:59Andy Greenwald?

  I'll give you two. Watch Bus for the comedy, and watch Sleepy Time for the holy fuck.

• 10:05Chris Ryan?

  Do you know what I'm gonna do?

• 10:06Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 10:06Chris Ryan?

  I'm gonna fucking watch it.

• 10:07Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, dude!

• 10:08Chris Ryan?

  All right. I'll, I'll watch two episodes of Bluey.

• 10:10Andy Greenwald?

  This is the angriest I've ever seen you. I love it. But, but the question was also, like, Andy-only faves, and I was like, if not Bluey, I would love for you to join me on the Saul Bellow project.

• 10:20Chris Ryan?

  I've done Adventures of Augie March when I was closer to Augie March's age. So I was like, a lot of this is going over my head and I don't know that I finished it. It was like college.

• 10:30Andy Greenwald?

  Now they're more like Ravelstein's age. I feel like we can really appreciate his novels.

• 10:34Chris Ryan?

  Which one are you reading that you like, but you're like chipping away, right? We're gonna, we have a lot of book talk.

• 10:38Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, Humboldt's gift I'm reading right now. It's awesome. It's really heavy.

• 10:41Chris Ryan?

  Also, Kaya, like if you've got like three or four recs, like dial them up, because I'll get to Oh, you know it. question soon. I really enjoyed this question from Kazda Arms and I did check to see that it was K A Z D apostrophe. So that's Kazda Arms.

• 10:55Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 10:55Chris Ryan?

  Are we flying too close to the sun by connecting the mayor of Easttown and Task universes? This is my heat two and every headline I see puts a pit in my stomach. There's no glory with no risk. That's what I say.

• 11:07Andy Greenwald?

  Have you always said that or just today?

• 11:09Chris Ryan?

  I just, it's, it's like, let's take the seatbelt off every once in a while and let's figure it out. I have confidence that because those two shows are so tonally linked, even if they're not narratively linked, linked as of yet. And obviously they're geographically linked, they're culturally linked within the sort of area it's shot. I do think that there will be places for that to happen. Now, this is in reference to Julianne Nicholson, her return to the Inglesby verse as the same character that she played in Mare. I can't remember her name, but very, you know, dramatic arc for her. And I personally, with the help of Nick from Bad Brother, I think we, we see some, some, some where this could happen. How could this, how, how she could be brought in?

• 11:52Andy Greenwald?

  You guys cracked the code. You, you were talking-

• 11:54Chris Ryan?

  It's not even cracking the code. It's just thinking about shared experiences between characters on both shows.

• 11:58Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 11:59Chris Ryan?

  But I understand what Kaz is saying, you know, it's like we, we desperately want things. And then when we get them, it's very nerve wracking. You know, this moment before it happens is, is the worst.

• 12:08Andy Greenwald?

  I understand the concern.

• 12:09Chris Ryan?

  Or perhaps the worst will be when D H D Al Pacino appears in Heat Two.

• 12:13Andy Greenwald?

  That's exactly, that's exactly right. I don't think, I appreciate the comparison. I don't think it's similar for two reasons. One, 30 years separate one and two. One is deeply entrenched in the cultural-

• 12:24Chris Ryan?

  Of heat, yes.

• 12:25Andy Greenwald?

  Of the cultural imagination, mostly thanks to you and your friends.

• 12:29Chris Ryan?

  I think it would have gotten there eventually, yeah.

• 12:31Andy Greenwald?

  I, I think you helped. I think you played a, a part in the legend. You're like Travis Scott in The Odyssey, you know? You're like two men, a diner.

• 12:39Chris Ryan?

  A bank, a job.

• 12:41Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, dude. So, uh, there's a 30 year gap, which is, makes it challenging because it's going to be different actors or it's going to be weird Irishman D act-

• 12:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 12:49Andy Greenwald?

  D H D stuff. But the other thing is that Michael Mann, I know that he is credited screenwriter and that he's the credited co-author of the novel, but he is primarily a director who thinks in terms of vibes and what he wants to shoot. Whereas the, the Johniverse, if you will, that Brad Inglesby is creating is entirely his doing. And it's in the moment and it's all a product of what he wants to tell and how he wants to tell stories. And so I don't really think there's that much tonal divide between Mare of Easttown and Task.

• 13:18Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 13:18Andy Greenwald?

  There, there, there is a scent, there's a, you know, there's a somberness, a seriousness, an appreciation of natural beauty, religious reflections, surprising humor. I mean, it's, it's not the same show, but it's the same engine behind it. So I think it'll be fine.

• 13:32Chris Ryan?

  I completely agree. Let's go to Oliver's question. And we have a couple of agency adjacent questions, which is good, because we talked about the agency uh, on last Monday's show.

• 13:41Andy Greenwald?

  Mm hmm.

• 13:42Chris Ryan?

  As I'm watching the season of the agency, I'm curious about how you guys feel about real geopolitical situations integrated into fictionalized series and how writers' rooms select and approach them. Do you think after the show is shot and the US invades Iran, uh, they're thinking, oh shit, the world we crafted just got broken by reality? Or is it a boon as more people than ever are interested in the topic? Curious if Andy has any firsthand experience navigating this or what it's doing for your own experience of the show? So, correct me if I'm wrong, but the agency is a recent period piece, right?

• 14:14Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, they have intentionally said it, I believe in 2023.

• 14:17Chris Ryan?

  Yes. So this season, I, I don't think the Iran war exists in this-

• 14:25Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 14:25Chris Ryan?

  This season and, and obviously a character from the show spends some time in Tehran undercover and-

• 14:31Andy Greenwald?

  And a lot of the conversations in Tehran, much like they were in the, in Le Bureau, are about jockeying for advantage when Iran opens up. When sanctions are lifted, when the world can take advantage of their oil, basically. So, and they're talking about like, oh, in 2030 and blah, blah, blah.

• 14:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 14:50Andy Greenwald?

  The reality has invaded the show.

• 14:52Chris Ryan?

  Do you think to its detriment?

• 14:54Andy Greenwald?

  No, because I think they made that-

• 14:56Chris Ryan?

  I mean-

• 14:57Andy Greenwald?

  They made that decision cleverly.

• 14:58Chris Ryan?

  What happens on the agency is of little concern to like the actual, like what's happening-

• 15:02Andy Greenwald?

  You don't think Pete Hegseth is, he's like when Lioness ends his favorite show? And then, and then this comes on? No, he doesn't like Lioness, because-

• 15:10Chris Ryan?

  It's women.

• 15:11Andy Greenwald?

  Someone told him the main character was named Joe. And he was psyched.

• 15:14Chris Ryan?

  He was like-

• 15:15Andy Greenwald?

  He was like, oh no. I don't think that, that it's, it's relevant in this case, but that was a smart, if not overly conservative decision that they made.

• 15:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I would imagine that it is incredibly difficult to write contemporary, like ripped from the headlines series that are set in the current moment. It would almost be easier to write something in this, in this vein, that's like recent nostalgia, nostalgia being 2023, or maybe speculatively in three years in the future. I, I think you can see a lack of comfort with how do we, how do we tell the story of the current global landscape?

• 15:51Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I think, I, yeah, I think, um, I think two things. One of the advantages Le Bureau had was because it was about the French secrets of foreign service. There was built in, and I mean this no disrespect to our ami, if you will. Um, I'm going to keep, because I've noticed people are like, oh, Andy just wants to speak French. I actually don't speak French. I'm just completely being an asshole and bluffing. Just years of Spanish, dog. There's a built in element of like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to it. In the sense that they are-

• 16:20Chris Ryan?

  Nobody likes us. Nobody believes in us.

• 16:21Andy Greenwald?

  And we're adjacent to the action. We are caught in between the, the really, really world moving powers. The challenge and ultimately why I think the agency was smart to retreat slightly was because anything the US does becomes news in a major way. That said, I did have a really interesting conversation a week or so ago with a pretty prominent producer of prestige television who has a real problem with the contemporary spy shows that are suddenly becoming-

• 16:51Chris Ryan?

  Tell me more.

• 16:52Andy Greenwald?

  Because all of them, in different ways, have run from the present moment. Either they are, um, period pieces to varying degrees, uh, imagined histories, I guess, like Star City, or, um, Slow Horses, which the whole logline is, we don't matter so much.

• 17:09Chris Ryan?

  Yes. And even Slow Horses is mostly dealing with, um, cases of the past. Right? Like it's a lot of like-

• 17:17Andy Greenwald?

  Cold cases, things coming back.

• 17:19Chris Ryan?

  Older spies who have wound up dead. Why? What did they have? What secrets did they have?

• 17:24Andy Greenwald?

  That said, I did feel like it was, its weakest storyline was the most recent one in which there was the, the, was it the mayoral election that was-

• 17:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, being tried to be engineered by the right wing to look like, I think, Aslan with terrorism, right?

• 17:38Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I think it struggled with that. But I, I, I, so I think it's an easy, it's not an easy criticism to make. I think it's an interesting criticism to consider, but the flip side of it is what show, we just haven't figured out how to do anything with the current moment, whether it is compelling international spy fiction or spy drama or satire, honestly.

• 17:57Chris Ryan?

  I think in a lot of ways, Trump is beyond narrativizing.

• 17:59Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 18:00Chris Ryan?

  So I can understand that.

• 18:02Speaker 00

  Star Wars, The Mandalorian and Grogu is now streaming on Disney Plus.

• 18:08Speaker 01

  What are you waiting for? Hop on.

• 18:10Speaker 00

  The must see galactic adventure comes home on Disney Plus.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  This is the way. Our only chance is to work together. I like this kid. Always wear your seatbelt.

• 18:24Speaker 00

  Star Wars, The Mandalorian and Grogu, now streaming on Disney Plus. Rated PG-13.

• 18:32Speaker 05

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• 19:02Chris Ryan?

  Matthew asks, "The success of the agency remaking La Bureau, Star City giving the Russian take on For All Mankind." Let me just stop you there, Matthew. I would not necessarily call those successes. We talked about them, but as we desperately await either one or both to be renewed by Apple or Paramount, respectively, I think maybe this is actually a separate conversation as to whether or not, you know, those things made things a little too complicated. But "The success of the agency remaking La Bureau, Star City giving the Russian take on For All Mankind, and the upcoming The Koreans being a foreign spin on the Americans made me wonder whether other TV shows could get a 'twin,' quote unquote." Personally, I think Friday Night Lights' twin with another sport would be incredible. Being Canadian, I'd vote for hockey. Andy, feel free to pitch a twin Twin Peaks.

• 19:47Andy Greenwald?

  I would never.

• 19:48Chris Ryan?

  I like the idea of this twinning, and I like the idea that you could take a series and just say, "What was happening on the other side of this wall, or on the other side of this conflict, or on the other side of town? Did you have anything that left out at you?"

• 20:01Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I thought it was just important to distinguish, because he mentions Koreans and the Americans. There are many international adaptations of shows, some successful, some not. There are formats that have traveled the world, and that would be an example of that. So I couldn't come up with too many international shows that I would want an American translation of, because the TV market is globalized anyway. So, like, Call My Agent, which was a pretty good French show, did get an English version, like a UK version, but it was kind of redundant, because people had watched the French version, because people are no longer allergic to subtitles. The idea of a twin, though, of telling the other side of the story was pretty interesting. And so, in terms of international versions,

• 20:43Andy Greenwald?

  I was like, "I'm sure there have been iterations of this, but could we do Cheers, but in a pub?" Like, why haven't we done that?

• 20:50Chris Ryan?

  Haven't we been trying to do that with our Instagram reels?

• 20:53Andy Greenwald?

  That's what I'm saying. Listen, I'm piecing it together myself. The other one, though, that occurred to me was, the shows that are, I would say they're not in dialogue with each other, one person is talking to the other one and one person isn't, is Mike Schur did Parks and Rec because he was obsessed with David Simon's The Wire.

• 21:12Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 21:13Andy Greenwald?

  So I kind of wish that we could just swap them. Just give Mike Schur a

• 21:20Chris Ryan?

  Police.

• 21:21Andy Greenwald?

  Or city to build, not just in the Parks and Rec Pawnee way, but like a major coastal city. He'd probably want to do Boston.

• 21:26Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 21:27Andy Greenwald?

  And then build it not like Brooklyn Nine-Nine, like he did with one police station, but like actually do something as ambitious with the sensibility.

• 21:34Chris Ryan?

  Right, like Dickensian.

• 21:35Andy Greenwald?

  And then David Simon would probably never do it, but what if we put him into a smaller department, not in

• 21:42Chris Ryan?

  Like a small-town sheriff?

• 21:44Andy Greenwald?

  Maybe. Or like land management or something. You know what I mean? Like, take him out of his comfort zone.

• 21:49Chris Ryan?

  Land management, you say?

• 21:51Andy Greenwald?

  Land management is the formal name. Please, land management with my father. Call me Landman.

• 21:56Chris Ryan?

  For some reason, my mind goes to Andor with this.

• 22:00Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, yeah.

• 22:01Chris Ryan?

  There are two stories from Andor. One would be like Andor from Krenex POV.

• 22:08Andy Greenwald?

  Oh.

• 22:09Chris Ryan?

  I just like Ben Mendelsohn, so I wouldn't mind seeing a story about a guy who's just trying to build something ambitious. You know?

• 22:17Andy Greenwald?

  You know, that's actually what Miyazaki's The Wind Rises is about.

• 22:20Chris Ryan?

  And then the other one would be something called Partisan, which is about Sawyer Era. Now, those aren't necessarily twin shows, and I know maybe some of the Sawyer Era stuff shows up in the animated shows, but I just think, you know, Behemoth doesn't work out, maybe Tony could come back to the

• 22:37Andy Greenwald?

  What is the Andor, this was a conversation in every major studio over the last three years.

• 22:43Chris Ryan?

  What's our Andor?

• 22:44Andy Greenwald?

  What is the Andor of other IP? Like, what is the way in? I don't know if we can do this from just cold.

• 22:50Chris Ryan?

  Do you mean the adult

• 22:52Andy Greenwald?

  The adult version?

• 22:54Chris Ryan?

  In-depth version of?

• 22:55Andy Greenwald?

  You know, the Riders of Rohan or whatever, the horsewomen? Like, what if it was What if it was that?

• 23:02Chris Ryan?

  They did that.

• 23:02Andy Greenwald?

  No, but what if they did that, but it was like Luck? Do you know what I mean?

• 23:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 23:05Andy Greenwald?

  It was like HBO's Rohirrim.

• 23:07Chris Ryan?

  David Lynch writing about like the horse maintenance.

• 23:09Andy Greenwald?

  But it's really about like the horse maintenance or horseman.

• 23:12Chris Ryan?

  Did you have one for Twin Twin Peaks? Is there like an other side of Twin Peaks?

• 23:16Andy Greenwald?

  No, because I just think, it's funny to get that question, because I was, I promise you I don't do this, but I did yesterday revisit a column that I wrote in 2014 when Twin Peaks: The Return was announced. And it was like a breathless all, just, honestly, I don't remember ever being this happy about anything. But it was like a mailbag styled about Twin Peaks, why it's happening, why it matters.

• 23:39Chris Ryan?

  Like an FAQ or something like that?

• 23:41Andy Greenwald?

  I kind of was doing a mailbag, and I had two Twin Peaks questions, and the news broke, and then I just made up the rest of the questions. No one's ever done that before. We actually haven't.

• 23:49Chris Ryan?

  These are from people.

• 23:50Andy Greenwald?

  These are real.

• 23:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 23:51Andy Greenwald?

  But anyway, the thing that I was trying to articulate then, and is only true or now post The Return, is Twin Peaks is not Special Agent Dale Cooper eating pie. It is David Lynch and Mark Frost, of course. So you can't do it. There's no other version of it.

• 24:07Chris Ryan?

  From Michael. "Hi, guys."

• 24:09Andy Greenwald?

  Hi.

• 24:10Chris Ryan?

  "One of my favorite slow-burn bits on the pod is when Andy finally engages with a piece of culture way after the world has moved on. Some of my favorite examples: Andy watches The Last Dance and gets into the conversation within it. It's pretty good." Two-plus years

• 24:23Andy Greenwald?

  It was good!

• 24:24Chris Ryan?

  After everyone stopped talking about it. The makeup watch of Chernobyl, and most recently when Andy was a brave boy and watched Weapons.

• 24:30Andy Greenwald?

  Thank you, Michael.

• 24:30Chris Ryan?

  "My question is, what is something people are talking about now, or has recently happened, that Andy will dip his toe in long after the cultural moment has ended?"

• 24:38Andy Greenwald?

  LeBron James joining the Sixers.

• 24:42Chris Ryan?

  I have to tell you something.

• 24:43Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 24:43Chris Ryan?

  I didn't say this last week.

• 24:44Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 24:46Chris Ryan?

  You have about two weeks to get excited about this, and

• 24:48Andy Greenwald?

  I am excited.

• 24:49Chris Ryan?

  Because pretty soon I'm not going to let you enjoy it when it's happening.

• 24:51Andy Greenwald?

  Listen, I thought a lot about

• 24:53Chris Ryan?

  You're going to be taken off some group chats.

• 24:55Andy Greenwald?

  First of all, the only sports group chat I'm on has three members. So that is vicious. Second, we recorded the episode yesterday that you started with LeBron news.

• 25:06Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 25:06Andy Greenwald?

  This is a week ago now, if you're listening. And I did some soul-searching after I got home. I really thought about it. And I think the truth is, I was afraid to believe. Because then, when I was like, I was thinking about it more, and I was seeing like pictures, like the Sixers' official announcement, I really think that I thought it was some like AI false flag. Like, I don't think I really, really believed it.

• 25:29Chris Ryan?

  I wonder whether or not, just to tie it back into Michael's question here, LeBron is Weapons. Like LeBron is The Last Dance. Like LeBron coming, it's just too mainstream for you.

• 25:41Andy Greenwald?

  It's not. I am pretty fucking excited now. I'm pretty excited. I think that the, what I was trying to articulate was the psychological journey of the last 10 years of being a Philadelphia basketball fan is so psychotic.

• 25:57Chris Ryan?

  Well, they're the ones that you can quit. You see, I feel like those are the guys that you've, the Sixers are the team that I feel like you've been like, "I won't be sampling this this year." You know, like

• 26:08Andy Greenwald?

  It's true.

• 26:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:09Andy Greenwald?

  But the fact, but the two-track thing. One is like, it's incredibly exciting from a basketball perspective, what our hero Mike Gancey has done in just a few weeks, honestly.

• 26:21Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 26:22Andy Greenwald?

  The second thing is, it does matter to me, in the way it matters to all the people who are screaming on Broad Street on Instagram, that like, people don't choose to do this.

• 26:30Chris Ryan?

  Not ordinarily, no.

• 26:31Andy Greenwald?

  You know? And so I think that I have, despite not living there for, I haven't lived in Philadelphia for 30 years, but like, I think there's some sort of like second, little brother, second-class kind of mindset.

• 26:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think you get to a little bit like, what Philadelphia are you referring to?

• 26:46Andy Greenwald?

  Surely it couldn't be the same one. So I am

• 26:50Chris Ryan?

  You are excited.

• 26:51Andy Greenwald?

  I'm pretty excited.

• 26:52Chris Ryan?

  Okay. Because I feel like you probably, it's just one of those things where like, you're so granular now with your Philly fandom, where you're like, "Oh, like Jalen Carter's contract extension."

• 27:02Andy Greenwald?

  Do you see? That news just broke!

• 27:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:05Andy Greenwald?

  I almost texted it to you while you were talking, because that's how excited I am about that.

• 27:10Chris Ryan?

  In any case, what is something that's happening in this moment, in the last few moments, that you feel like you'll check out in 2028?

• 27:18Andy Greenwald?

  You know the answer.

• 27:19Chris Ryan?

  Election night.

• 27:21Andy Greenwald?

  What else could I possibly be doing? It backrooms, right? It has to be backrooms.

• 27:26Chris Ryan?

  I think backroom's an obsession.

• 27:27Andy Greenwald?

  I think obsession, I think, was the Skip Bayless meme, "We're good." I think we're good, respectfully.

• 27:33Chris Ryan?

  Why?

• 27:34Andy Greenwald?

  I don't, I don't like stuff like that. That's not for me.

• 27:36Chris Ryan?

  What do you think it's like?

• 27:38Andy Greenwald?

  I, well, I read the Wikipedia.

• 27:39Chris Ryan?

  It's seven minutes long, there's a dog. Actually, there's a cat.

• 27:43Andy Greenwald?

  Careful.

• 27:45Andy Greenwald?

  But Backrooms, I'm very interested in.

• 27:47Chris Ryan?

  I actually think you would have way more to say and way more to think about with obsession.

• 27:53Andy Greenwald?

  Because I'm a hashtag ally?

• 27:54Chris Ryan?

  I just think it would just be, it gets into some really interesting dynamics about human relationships.

• 28:00Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, keep going.

• 28:01Chris Ryan?

  Backrooms is like, do you think you know what Backrooms is about?

• 28:04Andy Greenwald?

  I don't know what it's about. I understand aesthetically, I believe what it is.

• 28:09Chris Ryan?

  I will say, I think you could handle Backrooms.

• 28:11Andy Greenwald?

  As, as do I. That's why I feel.

• 28:13Chris Ryan?

  Obsession, I think you would be a little queasy at places and you would also be like, this is mad uncomfortable.

• 28:18Andy Greenwald?

  But I, to be clear, I've read everything that happens.

• 28:20Chris Ryan?

  Oh, okay.

• 28:21Andy Greenwald?

  I, I did the, I usually reserve this for Ari Aster films, both his horror movies and his comedies. I just read, I read the Wikipedia.

• 28:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but we'll get, we'll get Andy on the 2026 indie horror blockbuster train.

• 28:34Andy Greenwald?

  Is there something else that I missed, though, majorly?

• 28:36Chris Ryan?

  There isn't. There hasn't been. I think we've been pretty consistent.

• 28:39Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 28:40Chris Ryan?

  I don't think I've done, like, there hasn't been like, oh, I've done Big Picture three times about this, like, that you, and, and you're just like, I won't be seeing that.

• 28:47Andy Greenwald?

  I've been doing the work.

• 28:48Chris Ryan?

  I think Resident Evil in its, in, which is coming in September, will be an interesting test because I saw Zach Craigers said it is grotesque and incredibly bloody.

• 28:56Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I can't see that in the theater, I don't think.

• 28:59Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 28:59Andy Greenwald?

  But I am interested in seeing.

• 29:00Chris Ryan?

  Okay. I'll report back.

• 29:02Andy Greenwald?

  I'm sure you will. You'll be on the Big Picture three times to discuss it. I can listen.

• 29:06Chris Ryan?

  I just thought this was a great observation from a listener, from Luke.

• 29:09Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 29:10Chris Ryan?

  We have some of the most terrible theme songs ever in prestige television right now.

• 29:13Andy Greenwald?

  Preach.

• 29:14Chris Ryan?

  Luke, you're so fucking right, brother. Strange Game from Slow Horses. That song sucks. I don't want to hear it anymore. This is the problem with the, with the Slow Horses being on for seven seasons is you still have this really, really mid Mick Jagger song.

• 29:29Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 29:30Chris Ryan?

  The Joneses from Your Friends and Neighbors, which

• 29:32Andy Greenwald?

  Unbearable.

• 29:33Chris Ryan?

  I also don't like. And number one here, Love is Blindness on the Agency, which is just a hard skip for me.

• 29:41Andy Greenwald?

  Instant skip.

• 29:42Chris Ryan?

  What makes me mad about all of these, or at least Strange Game and Love is Blindness, is it's Mick Jagger and Jack White.

• 29:49Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 29:50Chris Ryan?

  You couldn't find one other thing for these guys to do. And I think what shows need to get back to, first of all, so he goes on about, you know, they've been bad, they're on for so long. They are also all performed by well-regarded musicians doing their absolute worst work.

• 30:05Chris Ryan?

  Every Slow Horses episodes ends on a horrible note when Mick Jagger says, it's a strange game.

• 30:11Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 30:12Chris Ryan?

  How is this happening? What can we do about it? We need to get back to getting a theme song that has variations from season to season. Like The Wire, Way Down on the Hole.

• 30:23Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 30:23Chris Ryan?

  I believe True Detective has riffed on some of its central, like, themes, if I remember correctly, but has always changed its music.

• 30:33Andy Greenwald?

  The Leftovers did that, too.

• 30:34Chris Ryan?

  The Leftovers. I don't know what is happening. I don't know who the guy is who wears like a quarter zip, who's like, Jack White, the kids love him, you know, and like puts him on the Agency.

• 30:44Andy Greenwald?

  I do.

• 30:45Chris Ryan?

  Who?

• 30:45Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, it's, people have bad taste. And sometimes people can be good at making TV and have bad taste in music. And I think that we have to get back to an era when there was someone, like, for years, and she still works and does great work, but like Alex Bittsavas was a woman who worked very closely with Josh Schwartz, who does have good taste on the OC and all of his shows. And she, she made being a music supervisor kind of cool. And it's okay if you are deep in the weeds of production or post-production, that you aren't keeping up with, you know, rap caviar in your spare time.

• 31:20Chris Ryan?

  I know, yeah.

• 31:20Andy Greenwald?

  Like, it's okay to have someone around you who you trust, who you share a Venn diagram of some taste with, to be like, check this out, or maybe this. It's fine. It's fine. Honestly, with respect to all these people, I generally would blame the showrunners here because

• 31:34Chris Ryan?

  That's the buck stops of them.

• 31:36Andy Greenwald?

  Because the buck stops with them. The job, there are many core aspects of an impossible job, but one of them is you hold aloft the chalice of taste of this whole thing.

• 31:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 31:46Andy Greenwald?

  Yes to that, no to that. And no one can understand your exact opinions about it. And it's not just that, like, if the agency's bad music decisions and needle drops stopped with the opening credits, I would say, okay, then this was clearly like a high-level producerial.

• 32:01Chris Ryan?

  David Ellison is just like, I've got, I've got Jack White on the phone.

• 32:04Andy Greenwald?

  Or Clooney was like entertaining him in Lake Como, was like, he really likes, he really likes Ok Tong Baby. And I'd be like, who among us?

• 32:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 32:11Andy Greenwald?

  The problem is, this season, which we raved about recently, last week, ends with the fucking Johnny Cash cover of Hurt.

• 32:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 32:20Andy Greenwald?

  Come on, dogs.

• 32:21Chris Ryan?

  I mean, that's an incredible song.

• 32:22Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, but it's lame AF to end a season of television with a gunfight. It's just like, because he's hurt right now, it's, or like, when, I know you love Poppy on the Agency, the daughter, when she was crying over a breakup and there was like a long scene of her listening to Phoebe.

• 32:38Chris Ryan?

  I like kids. I don't want to make it sound like I'm not like.

• 32:41Andy Greenwald?

  Don't talk to me, talk to them. They don't believe you.

• 32:43Chris Ryan?

  I don't want to like to be like I'm an ogre of some kind.

• 32:45Andy Greenwald?

  The allegations are out there.

• 32:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 32:48Andy Greenwald?

  But, you know, the scene when Poppy was crying and retreated to her room with her phone so she could just crush seasons of Bluey, you were like, this is stupid.

• 32:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 32:56Andy Greenwald?

  No, she was listening to Phoebe Bridgers in that moment. I'm like, come on.

• 33:01Chris Ryan?

  What should she be listening to?

• 33:02Andy Greenwald?

  I just think, be more interesting, do better. Do, do better, guys.

• 33:05Chris Ryan?

  One of the things I don't like.

• 33:06Andy Greenwald?

  But we got away from theme songs entirely, and now we are overcorrected in the other direction.

• 33:10Chris Ryan?

  One of the things I don't like about specifically Love is Blindness and Strange Game is that they make no choice with those songs.

• 33:19Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 33:19Chris Ryan?

  I was thinking about what the agency could have done to spruce things up a little bit. And I don't think that in the advertising, or even in the way that we've talked about it, we communicate, we didn't communicate what a slick thriller it was.

• 33:34Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 33:35Chris Ryan?

  As compared to The Bureau. And, you know, we, I, I moaned a bit about like, oh, there doesn't deviate enough from The Bureau's plot, like, why not take more chances? And I understand, like, you have this Jenga tower where you know where this thing is going over the course of five or six seasons if you get to tell it.

• 33:48Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 33:48Chris Ryan?

  And so you can't really start to be like, what if Martian had sex with this lady instead? You know, like, it's, you start to unravel the great work that, that they made and, and that they performed in The Bureau. But you could have told the story like in a little bit more of like a cool Doug Liman techno thriller way and just drop a little fucking Moby at the beginning, you know what I mean?

• 34:09Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, that's what you want? God moving over the face of the waters?

• 34:11Chris Ryan?

  No, just like some like, you know, 97, like, major club techno, like Heaven, you know, and in London.

• 34:20Andy Greenwald?

  I love it. Don't, yeah, you got me.

• 34:24Chris Ryan?

  So that was just an idea. I don't really know what to do for Strange, for Slow Horses.

• 34:27Andy Greenwald?

  Also, you're avoiding something that I think might be a little bit uncomfortable for you, which is that the theme song of Your Friends and Neighbors, which is part of an atrocious opening sequence, I have to say, is written and performed by your guy, Hamilton Lighthouser.

• 34:39Chris Ryan?

  I didn't, I, I didn't, you noticed I didn't comment on that.

• 34:42Andy Greenwald?

  I noticed that. I noticed that.

• 34:43Chris Ryan?

  Um, I have a, I have a statement to make.

• 34:47Andy Greenwald?

  Direct to camera, please.

• 34:49Chris Ryan?

  Sam Donski holds this opinion, so it's not solely my discovery.

• 34:54Chris Ryan?

  I don't know if he holds it still. I think that The Walkmen are the best band of the 2010s.

• 34:59Andy Greenwald?

  Wow.

• 35:00Chris Ryan?

  Is that the 2010s?

• 35:01Andy Greenwald?

  Not really.

• 35:02Chris Ryan?

  I think The Walkmen are better than The Strokes.

• 35:05Andy Greenwald?

  You couldn't even keep a straight face saying it.

• 35:08Chris Ryan?

  Lisbon

• 35:09Andy Greenwald?

  It's outrageous.

• 35:10Chris Ryan?

  and Heaven are as good as it gets for like, late period, like, rock bands from that era.

• 35:17Andy Greenwald?

  Okay. It's not better than The Strokes.

• 35:20Chris Ryan?

  They, The Strokes have, have two really good records. And I, I am gonna do a Strokes band spleen in the future, so, yes.

• 35:26Andy Greenwald?

  There are, The Strokes have more good songs on their bad records than The Walkmen did.

• 35:32Chris Ryan?

  Nope.

• 35:32Andy Greenwald?

  In entirety.

• 35:33Chris Ryan?

  Nope.

• 35:34Andy Greenwald?

  Hundred percent.

• 35:34Chris Ryan?

  Wrong.

• 35:35Andy Greenwald?

  Bring me on, Yasi. Come on.

• 35:37Chris Ryan?

  Well, you should do it.

• 35:38Andy Greenwald?

  No, I, I am not.

• 35:39Chris Ryan?

  No, you should do the band spleen instead of me.

• 35:41Andy Greenwald?

  I don't care about them that much. And yet, my opinion is absolutely accurate.

• 35:48Chris Ryan?

  Maybe we should do a great cultural exchange where I make you a Walkmen mixtape and then I'll watch two episodes of Bluey.

• 35:53Andy Greenwald?

  I was there in the 2000s. There are many bands that I'm like, they're fine, or I didn't like, I don't like them as much.

• 35:59Chris Ryan?

  They're goaded.

• 35:59Andy Greenwald?

  I have never liked The Walkmen.

• 36:01Chris Ryan?

  Jason says, given Widows Bay, how Widows Bay broke out, do you think it confirms it's still possible for a well-made show to gain popularity through old-school word of mouth? Or is this an exception to the algorithmic rule?

• 36:12Andy Greenwald?

  Yes and no. I think that there is a narrative about Widows Bay that is true, which is, it is so undeniably good and surprising and, and addictive, that it, without question, built an audience over time and gave people that really rare, these days, feeling of participation in the growth and success of something that they care about, that reminded us of the way things used to work in terms of word of mouth success. That's true.

• 36:41Andy Greenwald?

  I think the other narrative that is harder to parse is that you can't really have a conversation about a show like Widows Bay being a success without really diving into the fact that the word success doesn't mean any one thing anymore, particularly in the case of television, because everything that, everything pops up for us if we subscribe the way things used to. But it's not a level playing field in the way that Caroline and the City proved itself to be a good audience hole after Seinfeld or whatever versus Veronica's Closet.

• 37:10Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 37:10Andy Greenwald?

  Like, it is not a neutral playing field where like, something can grow over time in comparison to everything else, because it's all being beamed to the same households. Widows Bay maybe only exists, I don't know if this is true, but maybe only exists because the, the, the willingness to take a chance, the price point of all the creatives involved, the, the, agreeing to shoot it on location in Massachusetts, all of this. It's possible that only Apple was going to let all these things happen anyway.

• 37:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:38Andy Greenwald?

  And then B, the level of what success means for Apple is completely different from what it means for NBC or Netflix or HBO Max, because, as we've discussed, Apple doesn't even have 1% of the national television audience.

• 37:51Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 37:51Andy Greenwald?

  So there's the romantic version of it, which is true, and then there's the slightly unromantic version of it, which is also true.

• 37:56Chris Ryan?

  I wonder whether the best indicator of Widows Bay's word of mouth would be its Emmy nomination haul. Because I think that what happens sometimes is that a show will get some momentum. But the real word of mouth hysteria takes place when it goes from like, hey, this show's really good, or this show's great, to, have you seen it? It's the best thing I've ever seen. And that kind of happened with Adolescence, that kind of happened with Baby Reindeer, that happened with the first season of Stranger Things, that happened in a, in a different kind of language, I would say, that happened with Ted Lasso, the first season.

• 38:29Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 38:30Chris Ryan?

  Where like, as people got through the kind of turns of that season, it was like, oh, this thing that I didn't think, I didn't think was gonna be that good, or I thought I had very low expectations for is actually quite charming. Oh my God, now it's like, like a 360-degree lifestyle choice for some people to be into Ted Lasso. So Widows Bay, I, I'm not necessarily comparing show to show to Ted Lasso. What I'm saying is like, I've noted that, like, Once it got to like 80% approval rating, the, the, the jump from 80 to 99 seemed like it caught on like wildfire.

• 39:04Andy Greenwald?

  I, I agree with you. I will say though, that-

• 39:08Chris Ryan?

  You're so good at saying, "I agree with you," when you're like, "I don't really know what you're talking about, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna pivot from there."

• 39:13Andy Greenwald?

  I do agree, but I-

• 39:14Chris Ryan?

  I really love it.

• 39:14Andy Greenwald?

  No, but I think that what we're talking about in terms of, "Ah, now it has truly been accepted," is still within our bubble because we're talking about like, "In this town, everybody likes it and the Emmys reflect that." And that's also what happened with Adolescents.

• 39:24Chris Ryan?

  At the Nithia fundraiser, people couldn't stop talking about-

• 39:28Andy Greenwald?

  Mixing horror with comedy, just like mixing socialism with boots-on-the-ground, practical municipal problem-solving. But it's the same thing that happened with The Pit. Now, it's not just anecdotal that those shows are massive.

• 39:40Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 39:40Andy Greenwald?

  But I am curious what, like, maybe some of our, like, real America reporters-

• 39:45Chris Ryan?

  I think you're-

• 39:46Andy Greenwald?

  Will email and say, like, "Has Widow's Bay taken off in that way?" I'm only trying to decouple it from our own nostalgia for that experience, because when, to use another example, like, when Seinfeld premiered and it had bad ratings, and then over two or three seasons, suddenly it became a juggernaut that went, you know, nine seasons and anchored NBC's lineup. That, that is a more tangible evidence-based, like, "It was this and now it's that," and Seinfeld wasn't just popular at Nithia fundraisers.

• 40:14Chris Ryan?

  And I, it's still hard to explain to people, like, back in the 2000s, at 8:58 on a Wednesday night, all you would see in a bar is, like, abandoned Miller High Life bottles because everybody ran home to watch Lost.

• 40:27Andy Greenwald?

  Yes. I, I mean, uh, the, the, the political commentator and noted big-picture fan Matt Iglesias recently wrote a, a whole thing about how The Single Guy, which was another one of NBC's, like, "Hey, it's kinda like Friends," uh, was considered a failure, but it was pulling 15 million viewers a week.

• 40:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 40:46Andy Greenwald?

  No show, other than the Super Bowl, pulls numbers like that now. And so-

• 40:50Chris Ryan?

  I think some shows do that.

• 40:52Andy Greenwald?

  You could aggregate audience-

• 40:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 40:54Andy Greenwald?

  And say that 15 million people have watched this over the course of three, five, eight days. But in terms of broadcast television, I mean, if that was the failure, what were the numbers of the successes? They were in the 20 millions, 30 millions, just guaranteed sitting at home, leaving their beers unattended.

• 41:10Chris Ryan?

  Adam writes, "What historical event should be a television series or miniseries? Who would you pick to run it and star in it? Personally, I'd love to see Sam Levinson's take on the Teapot Dome scandal with Sydney Sweeney starring as disgraced Secretary of the Interior Albert Baconfall."

• 41:25Andy Greenwald?

  I don't believe Adam.

• 41:26Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I don't, I don't think Adam's being serious, but this is, uh, if, if we're just living in a blue sky- and I, I can, I can, I can ask for anything, I always wanted to see David Milch tackle the fall of Saigon.

• 41:40Andy Greenwald?

  Jesus Christ. Some light watching. Wow.

• 41:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 41:45Andy Greenwald?

  That'd be incredible.

• 41:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 41:47Andy Greenwald?

  You have any other, you have any, like, particular, who do you, who do you want to be the POV characters? Who do you want to throw in there?

• 41:53Chris Ryan?

  I'd leave that to Dave, you know?

• 41:54Andy Greenwald?

  You think he'd figure it out?

• 41:55Chris Ryan?

  I mean, CIA involvement in the fall of Saigon and, and, you know, the various factions- that were in town at the time would be really interesting to see it dramatized. There's so much stuff to do there. I've read several books about the subject, so-

• 42:09Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, yeah. Are you volunteering to be a consultant? I would like to get Craig Mazin far away from video games and mushrooms and, um, send him back to Lithuania to do a miniseries on the failed Soviet coup of 1991.

• 42:22Chris Ryan?

  Wow.

• 42:23Andy Greenwald?

  Cass Jesse Plemons as Boris Yeltsin.

• 42:25Chris Ryan?

  No, you would do British guys, right? Again, wouldn't you Chernobyl it again?

• 42:29Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, but you film it in Lithuania.

• 42:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but Jesse Plemons is like, would you have him do an English accent?

• 42:34Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, okay. It was mostly a joke about how he kinda looks like Boris Yeltsin, but we could, we could dig in a little more-

• 42:39Chris Ryan?

  Jesse's looking pretty good these days.

• 42:40Andy Greenwald?

  He looks incredible, but he is willing to transform himself.

• 42:43Chris Ryan?

  Yes. Yeah.

• 42:44Andy Greenwald?

  There will be no Jesse Plemons slander on this show. But the question is, I mean, first of all, I, I have, I find that period of time fascinating, and that's definitely like, I don't know if you had the same experience, but that happened in the summer of 91. And I remember I was on like a family vacation and we were like glued to CNN, but I didn't understand what was happening. So it was one of my first memories of like, "Oh, history is happening here, but I don't really understand."

• 43:09Chris Ryan?

  I gotta be completely honest, I have no recollection of this.

• 43:12Andy Greenwald?

  You're probably doing travel baseball, but-

• 43:13Chris Ryan?

  I was either doing that or I was listening to, uh, Nevermind a lot, you know?

• 43:18Andy Greenwald?

  Wasn't out yet. Wasn't out yet, dude.

• 43:20Chris Ryan?

  Early tape?

• 43:21Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, did you get any?

• 43:23Chris Ryan?

  Demos.

• 43:25Andy Greenwald?

  You were walking around with a copy of Bleach being like, "These guys are gonna be big." Like, "This fall, this fall, Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magic is gonna come out, but don't get excited because a week later-"

• 43:37Chris Ryan?

  Nevermind come out?

• 43:38Andy Greenwald?

  Like, September, October? Freshman year of high school?

• 43:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 43:41Andy Greenwald?

  Come on. It's fun. But, okay, do you wanna do, do you wanna do a miniseries about that coming out?

• 43:46Chris Ryan?

  That'd be pretty sick.

• 43:47Andy Greenwald?

  It would be pretty sick for us. I'm just curious, who would play in my failed Soviet coup? Who plays George Bush?

• 43:54Chris Ryan?

  Wait, who tried to coup who? They tried to coup Gorbachev or they tried to coup Yeltsin?

• 43:58Andy Greenwald?

  This was still the Soviet Union.

• 43:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 43:59Andy Greenwald?

  It hadn't fallen apart yet. And Gorbachev was loosening restrictions on-

• 44:04Chris Ryan?

  Oh, that's right.

• 44:04Andy Greenwald?

  The Union, and countries were starting to be like, "Maybe there'll be an independent Kazakhstan."

• 44:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 44:11Andy Greenwald?

  And so some hardliners tried to overthrow the government, and Yeltsin, who was President of Russia, was like, "Absolutely not, we will, we are the, we are the government," like, this very, very effective.

• 44:23Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 44:23Andy Greenwald?

  And it hastened the demise of the Soviet Union. And it all happened like over a couple of days with like lawmakers being locked in the Duma and it was like very exciting. Bernard Shaw was like giving us breathless reports on it. But I think it would be interesting to, to, to talk about like what, how that was playing. You could have CIA involvement, being surprised, or were they nudging, who plays Secretary of State, ultimate insider James Baker? Who, by the way, still with us. 96 years young.

• 44:49Chris Ryan?

  James, uh, maybe Jeff Daniels for James Baker?

• 44:52Andy Greenwald?

  Jeff Daniels is, yeah, but he's always-

• 44:53Chris Ryan?

  He's played a lot of those guys.

• 44:54Andy Greenwald?

  That's what I mean, he's always him. So, think about it.

• 44:57Chris Ryan?

  Ryan asks, "What piece of culture or entertainment were you most convinced was destined to become a cultural hit that didn't happen? Not because it was tailored to your taste, but because you thought it had everything it needed to break through, and then it just didn't. Did the culture miss it, or did you overestimate its broader appeal?" I have, uh, an answer for this that I think I've told on either other mailbags or anecdotally on like Big Pick and stuff.

• 45:20Chris Ryan?

  Back when it came out, which I think was 18 or 19 or something like that, Sean, Fantasy and I went and saw the premiere of the movie Long Shot, which was Seth Rogen and Charlize Theron in a kind of political rom-com.

• 45:33Andy Greenwald?

  Written by our friend Liz Hannah, right?

• 45:34Chris Ryan?

  And, uh, directed by Jonathan Levin, and like, it was in the Paramount in Austin.

• 45:40Andy Greenwald?

  Theater, yeah.

• 45:40Chris Ryan?

  You would've thought Goonies had just come out. People were hysterically laughing.

• 45:45Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 45:46Chris Ryan?

  Charlize Theron and, and Seth Rogen came out, and Charlize was like in tears because she was like, "We really did it, America? Like, we made a beautiful, fun, romantic comedy that everybody loves and like, this'll make a billion dollars." Boys to Men came out and performed afterwards.

• 46:05Andy Greenwald?

  The current three-person lineup or the full quartet?

• 46:07Chris Ryan?

  The third, the, it was a mid, like a adjusted lineup.

• 46:10Andy Greenwald?

  That's the sign.

• 46:12Chris Ryan?

  And Sean and I left and we were like, "This is gonna be Pretty Woman. This is going to be like as big as it gets."

• 46:18Andy Greenwald?

  Wow.

• 46:19Chris Ryan?

  And I think it made like 40 million bucks.

• 46:21Andy Greenwald?

  Wow.

• 46:22Chris Ryan?

  Uh, and is beloved and is very, very, very funny, but did not-

• 46:28Andy Greenwald?

  Your radar was off.

• 46:29Chris Ryan?

  My radar was off. I got, I got Austint, which sometimes happens in South by Southwest.

• 46:33Andy Greenwald?

  Or all film festivals.

• 46:34Chris Ryan?

  Couple lone stars in ya, have a couple tacos.

• 46:37Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 46:37Chris Ryan?

  And then you're like, "This is fucking great, man."

• 46:40Andy Greenwald?

  My worry is that David Milch is listening, being like, "I don't think I can trust this guy to be my advisor on my Saigon project." By the way, I just, I just want to amend one thing. September 24th, 1991 saw the release of Nirvana's Nevermind and Red Hot Chili Peppers' Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magic. Because I really remember, records used to come out on Tuesdays, and like, people came in with the tapes the next day and it was like immediately like it was factional.

• 47:01Chris Ryan?

  Ooh, you guys were like trading tapes? Like Dick's picks?

• 47:05Andy Greenwald?

  No, it's like Canal Street during the DatPiff era.

• 47:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 47:09Andy Greenwald?

  What a day. Anyway-

• 47:11Chris Ryan?

  Do you have an answer for this?

• 47:12Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, I, I, the jury's still out, but I feel that way a little bit about another Seth Rogen project, about The Invite, which I think is just a fucking incredible movie. And I think it's doing well.

• 47:25Chris Ryan?

  What do you think the ceiling should have been for that movie?

• 47:27Andy Greenwald?

  I don't know. I, I saw people who actually know things about, like, I was reading on some film site that it was a gamble to counterprogram with it as opposed to take advantage of potentially, like, if this was an August release-

• 47:39Chris Ryan?

  I, I don't understand why it wasn't released in August.

• 47:41Andy Greenwald?

  It seems like the, the, the play was, "Let's give people an, a zag option from Supergirl and The Odyssey and Spider-Man, and like have something bubbling in the background and we're gonna commit to a longer rollout for it," but I don't know if that happens anymore.

• 47:57Chris Ryan?

  I sadly think it will have a very nice life on VOD, P VOD, and then streaming. Uh, I don't know, I mean, like, Fantasy's talked about this, but like August is now the new dumpuary.

• 48:08Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 48:09Chris Ryan?

  Where there's just like this kind of tumbleweeds blowing across town as like people try to avoid the last days of Spider-Man and Odyssey going forward.

• 48:21Chris Ryan?

  I don't know what the right month for Invite was. I suppose there is a chance that they could have just been like, "This is a straight-up awards movie and it's coming out in November," um, but I think it's a very crowded market.

• 48:33Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 48:33Chris Ryan?

  I think- Maybe, maybe like, did The Martian come out in September? Like, there's like a, there is like spots in September, I think it could have worked where there was some, it's a summer movie, it's kind of fun, but it's also, it'll make you think. I don't know.

• 48:48Andy Greenwald?

  But The Martian is more crowd pleasing, more sci-fi, you know, so that straddles the line between like, we want to get nominated here, but also, we're going to pick up some of the summer vibes.

• 48:57Chris Ryan?

  Well, I was also, there was a strange thing that happened with that, which it did an award-style rollout, where it opened in New York and LA, and then it kind of expanded over the course of a couple of weeks. And I don't think that was beneficial, because I think you do all your press, everybody's getting served your cute, like, you know, take a lie detector test videos, but then they look to see where the invite is playing, and it's not open. So, I think that there was-

• 49:22Andy Greenwald?

  We didn't talk about it for that reason. We both saw it when it was playing in LA.

• 49:25Chris Ryan?

  I mean, the big pick, we had recorded that, that podcast was like, two weeks old, so, yeah.

• 49:29Andy Greenwald?

  I have one other answer to this, which was, let me set the scene for you again, since we're kind of 90s focused. This is probably August, 1999. Your humble narrator has been working at Spin Magazine for about two months, three months, and I hear like raucous laughter and celebration, which is not common in that office in the 90s, coming from like the, like the kitchen break room area. And I go in, and the assistants have, the other assistants, I was an assistant, they've stolen from the features editor desk the VHS tapes of the upcoming fall pilots.

• 50:05Chris Ryan?

  Oh.

• 50:05Andy Greenwald?

  And they have put in the tape of an NBC show called Freaks and Geeks, and are like, this is the greatest television show we've ever seen. And it spreads through the office like wildfire, and everyone was like, oh my god, TV, the much maligned medium has finally come up with something great.

• 50:20Chris Ryan?

  You put down your copy of Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magic, and you said, hmm, maybe I have something to say about this medium.

• 50:27Andy Greenwald?

  Picked up my copy of Blood Meridian. I was like, nope. Now, I, I, I credit Angela Kelly and William Van Meter for having the foresight to understand of what a cult classic would be, but there was this sense that, and I think people still share this, that this should have been, and it was culturally, but that show only lasted, what, nine episodes?

• 50:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. That, I'm trying to think if, I don't have any recollection of that. I was really, really, really not watching television at that era.

• 50:55Andy Greenwald?

  I know, because that's when The Sopranos was on.

• 50:57Chris Ryan?

  Right, exactly. And I apologize, and, and I have seen almost all of, I would imagine, The Sopranos in random, not chronological order.

• 51:07Andy Greenwald?

  Do you know what it's about?

• 51:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 51:08Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, good.

• 51:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 51:09Andy Greenwald?

  Just checking.

• 51:10Chris Ryan?

  American Man, Ben asks, and this is, we've now come to the double down-

• 51:15Andy Greenwald?

  Hell yeah.

• 51:15Chris Ryan?

  -adjacent part of this, this conversation. Ben asks, "In April, in April of 2025, I brought Jordan Harper's Everybody Knows on a family vacation in LA, based on your glowing praise for the book. I loved reading the book. In the city it was set, it gave the experience a richness. My family is returning to LA for vacation this winter, so is my, so my question is, what LA book should I pack with me? Could be crime, but I'm also interested in any book that captures LA as a place." Now, funnily enough, Ben asks this question, right as Jordan Harper has released another book called-

• 51:48Andy Greenwald?

  It's called A Violent Masterpiece. I'm about 60% through it.

• 51:51Chris Ryan?

  And would you say vibe-wise is similar?

• 51:54Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, it's dark as fuck. I think that he is an incredible storyteller of a very specific story, one that you and I are very, very open to.

• 52:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:04Andy Greenwald?

  This book is, like everybody knows, he writes about not just contemporary LA, but like, literally right now, where there are characters and conspiracies that have very clear analogues to scandals that are in our life, from like Armie Hammer to, like, the guy who produced all those kids' shows for Nickelodeon.

• 52:22Chris Ryan?

  Dan Schneider.

• 52:23Andy Greenwald?

  Yes. And linking them through POV characters who are like, everybody knows this is about the dark arts of publicity.

• 52:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:31Andy Greenwald?

  This is about like, a defense attorney who advertises on buses, and a woman whose job it is to create bespoke borderline illegal experiences for incredibly rich people.

• 52:41Chris Ryan?

  What kind of experiences?

• 52:42Andy Greenwald?

  Well, like, literally anything that you, you would want. So it's like, you could set up, you could rent like, the Magic Castle, and you could go in, and everyone inside is wearing a Jordan Carter mask, but smoking a cigarette indoors, and you could be like, uh-

• 52:55Chris Ryan?

  Jalen Carter?

• 52:56Andy Greenwald?

  This is, what did I say?

• 52:57Chris Ryan?

  Jordan Carter?

• 52:58Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, Jalen Carter. Jordan Harper masks. And it's just like, oh, have you written another book? Apologies.

• 53:03Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 53:05Andy Greenwald?

  Anyway, it's, it's really cool, and it's really dark. I really love the idea of reading Jordan Harper books on a family vacation.

• 53:10Chris Ryan?

  I usually do movies set in the place that I'm visiting, but I, I do love to try and enrich and deepen my experience of a, of a city. Like, I try to read London stuff when I'm in London, et cetera. As far as an LA book, this one features, well, 99.9% less crime than Jordan Harper novels, but something Andy and I both adore is Larry McMurtry's Houston books.

• 53:34Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 53:34Chris Ryan?

  Or the Danny Deck books. But one of them, or several of them, are in and around the movie industry. And my favorite is Somebody's Darling, which is about a character named Jill trying to make a movie.

• 53:47Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, and characters who-

• 53:49Chris Ryan?

  In the 70s, right?

• 53:50Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I, I think that, um, there's two, I have, I have a bunch of answers I can fire off. There are the sort of like, born and bred Angelino books, where people are like, you don't really understand what it's like here, and here's what it is to live here, and I love books like that. And I would put in that category, Bret Easton Ellis, who we talked about recently, like, Less Than Zero is still an essential read. Eve Babbitt's, I would recommend. Slow Days, Fast Company. And then there's the sort of like, I've, the classic, like, I've Come Here and It's All Rotten, which I think, you know, Al Chandler, High Window, Lady in the Lake, Big Sleep, Joan Didion, played as-

• 54:29Chris Ryan?

  Don Carpenter Hollywood Trilogy.

• 54:30Andy Greenwald?

  That's what I'm getting. Because the other one, I would say, just is, the other classic of like, oh my god, it's actually hell, is Nathaniel West's Day of the Locust, which is a pretty quick and good read. But my favorite, I think, maybe we share this, our favorite version of it is the, well, gosh darn it, I just love the movies. And McMurtry is like that too. Like, he fucking hates the cynicism of it, but he just couldn't stop loving it and being hopeful and romantic. So, any book that touches LA, All My Friends Are Going to be Strangers, Somebody's Darling, or my beloved Don Carpenter, who wrote, all of his books are worth reading. Some of them are in print, but I do believe there is an in-print edition of his three Hollywood books.

• 55:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:06Andy Greenwald?

  I think it's called The Hollywood Trilogy. They are not overtly connected, but characters come and go. And this is a guy who dreamed of working in movies, he has one credit, it's the ripped torn vehicle Payback, like, 1972. His dreams got trash compacted a thousand times over, and yet you read these books, and there's the one turnaround is the most, is the last of the three. And it's just about a screenwriter whose dreams are dying, and an executive whose business is being taken away, and, god, they love cocaine so much, but they're just still like, when the lights go down in that cinema, romance. I love those books.

• 55:40Chris Ryan?

  Those books kind of have a Steely Dan Liner notes feel.

• 55:44Andy Greenwald?

  Hell yeah.

• 55:45Chris Ryan?

  And I, I, I, I respect that. There's, there was, I would say, 10 to 20 emails asking us for book recommendations.

• 55:52Andy Greenwald?

  That's cool.

• 55:54Chris Ryan?

  We're going to bring in Kaia on mic for this, because Kaia's probably the most voracious reader I maybe know, outside of you.

• 56:01Andy Greenwald?

  No, she's much more voracious than I am.

• 56:03Chris Ryan?

  I'll list some things that I am currently reading, or are in the to-read pile-

• 56:08Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 56:09Chris Ryan?

  -as I venture out on vacation. So I'm almost done, London Falling by Patrick Radenkeef. This is a book version of a very impactful and wonderful New Yorker article he wrote, like, a year or two ago. It's about a death in London, but is really an expose and an investigation into the way London threw open its doors to the Russian oligarch class, and the way London essentially depends on dark money to function, since it doesn't really make anything anymore. And I, I, I think that that is the element that really comes across in the book version, whereas in the magazine article, you're like, it

• 56:54Chris Ryan?

  is strange that there are so many empty luxury apartments in London, but like, what happened to this kid? You know, you're just trying to get to the bottom of the case. This is much more about why people were drawn to London historically, and in recent history, what conditions happened in their countries, often because of English imperialism that created like, their, their journey to London, and how they've used London and London's law enforcement's rather like, opaque and permissive relationship to the wealthy, to their advantage. And it is fucking awesome. Radenkeef doesn't miss, obviously, he did say nothing, An Empire of Pain. I also, for my trip to the lake, I Have Troubles by J.G.

• 57:37Chris Ryan?

  Farrell, which is a, kind of seems like comic surreal tale about a guy who comes back from conflict and is staying at a hotel, and like, his fiancee looks different than she did before he went away. And also, like, it's, it's an Irish novel, it's about, it's about like, things happening outside of the hotel, but it seems really right up my alley. I got it on the New York Review of Books Memorial Day Sale. This book, Slow Fade by Rudolf Warlitzer. He's a, sort of a acclaimed screenwriter who's been in and around, speaking of our kind of Don Carpenter characters.

• 58:12Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 58:13Chris Ryan?

  And he worked a lot with Alex Cox, but this book is kind of a fictionalized book about his relationship with Sam Peckinpah.

• 58:21Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, good.

• 58:22Chris Ryan?

  So, I'll expect some fireworks there. And then me and a couple of buddies, but specifically one, are rereading Tree of Smoke by Dennis Johnson.

• 58:31Andy Greenwald?

  Is this is what you did after you kicked me off the sports jet?

• 58:35Andy Greenwald?

  And they wonder why there's an epidemic of loneliness among men.

• 58:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, because we're all reading Tree of Smoke and crying. What do you got?

• 58:43Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, I forgot to fully prepare for this question, so I have very little.

• 58:47Chris Ryan?

  You know, for somebody who, like, you read so much, you're constantly texting me from Romans to tell me, like, should I get this? I've got this. This is amazing. And then when I ask you.

• 58:56Andy Greenwald?

  I don't remember things anymore.

• 58:57Chris Ryan?

  No, that's not true. I think you're just like books are for me.

• 59:00Andy Greenwald?

  No, God, no, I'm not gatekeeping. I mean, I read, uh, I'm reading Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow and a Violent Masterpiece.

• 59:06Chris Ryan?

  By Jordan Harper.

• 59:07Andy Greenwald?

  In tandem, because Humboldt's Gift.

• 59:10Chris Ryan?

  I just can't do that way.

• 59:11Andy Greenwald?

  In this case, I can, because reading late period Bellow, it's like, three pages takes a lot of time. It's very, very dense. It's hilarious and brilliant. And if I read it in bed, which I like to do, it is instant, instant ambient.

• 59:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 59:27Andy Greenwald?

  It's so taxing. Whereas Violent Masterpiece, and this is no disrespect to Jordan Harper, it is very engaging.

• 59:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 59:33Andy Greenwald?

  And an easier nighttime read. But I also just read, like, I was doing a lot of, um, I don't know if I met, did I mention that I read this book Effingers earlier in the year? It was really good. And, uh, so, but afterwards I did a bunch of, like, housekeeping, because I finally read Playworld by Adam Ross, which you had recommended.

• 59:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, thank you.

• 59:49Andy Greenwald?

  Because I like to do things that you recommend. And, uh, and like the most recent Murakami, which I hadn't read, which was really struggled, but I had to finish it. What's Kaia got?

• 59:57Speaker 06

  Just last night, I finished this book called The Sisters by Jonas Hassan Camiri. He's a Sw- half Swedish, half Tunisian writer, and it's set in Stockholm, and it's about 700 pages long. And it follows these three.

• 1:00:15Chris Ryan?

  Kaia, the door's stopped.

• 1:00:16Speaker 06

  This is like the first time in a while I've really, like, gotten into a novel that long. Um, and it was actually quite rewarding to finish. So if you're looking for like a nice slow burn summer read, that was great. Um, I also have Mad Woman by Chelsea Beaker, which is a bit more of like a thriller-esque book, but like a nice, quick summer read. And then my favorite thing that I've read so far this year is Heart the Lover by Lily King.

• 1:00:44Chris Ryan?

  Bang.

• 1:00:45Speaker 06

  I've talked about before on this podcast and.

• 1:00:47Chris Ryan?

  My wife Phoebe just read that.

• 1:00:49Andy Greenwald?

  I forgot to mention my favorite book of the year. I did mention it briefly, but it was Lives of the Saints by Nancy Lemon, which is from the eighties, and, uh, it was just put out by NYRV.

• 1:00:57Chris Ryan?

  I just copped that on the Memorial Day sale.

• 1:00:59Andy Greenwald?

  It is absolutely intoxicating. It's about a woman who's home from college back to her native New Orleans in the summer, and everyone is drinking and sort of fading through life. And it's just, it's one of those writers where you're like, oh, there you are. I've been wondering, someone who can create this way of being, and it's completely idiosyncratic. And then I also got her, they also published her new book, her most recent book. It's called Oyster Diaries. And it's wild to be like, oh, now she, the same woman is writing essentially, like many great writers, the same book. But now in her 50s and 60s.

• 1:01:32Chris Ryan?

  Oh.

• 1:01:32Andy Greenwald?

  And it's also really, really captivating.

• 1:01:35Chris Ryan?

  I know people are often like, could you please write down those books? Maybe we can just like throw up like a, a doc with the book recommendations in a, in a, in like a notes page and post it on Instagram so people can grab it.

• 1:01:47Andy Greenwald?

  I, I do wonder if there's some way to, this is just me wondering idly, but like, there are writers that all three of us love and have done deep dives into the, if there's a way to be like, oh, here's our recommended LA books. Here's our recommended Elmore Leonard, like the ones you should read to start.

• 1:02:02Chris Ryan?

  Like a, like a, basically a database of our recommendations kind of thing?

• 1:02:05Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, or even like a.

• 1:02:06Chris Ryan?

  We still have that Tumblr.

• 1:02:07Andy Greenwald?

  A starter guide. We do. We still do have the, the Double Down Book Club. Was it Snitch Butler's Tumblr?

• 1:02:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:13Andy Greenwald?

  Was last updated in 2012?

• 1:02:16Chris Ryan?

  I think the name still rings out, though.

• 1:02:17Andy Greenwald?

  13. It does, in these streets.

• 1:02:19Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Zachary asks, if you executive produce a TV show or movie that goes straight to streaming, how do you make your money back? Or make your money? Uh, just the first sale or like, hope it gets to syndication years down the road? What syndication, dude?

• 1:02:32Andy Greenwald?

  Exactly.

• 1:02:33Chris Ryan?

  Uh, like, how does Reese Witherspoon make money off of Lucky? Just curious. I included this because A, I don't really know the answer. But B, I've had conversations with people in and around the industry over the last couple of months. And one thing that has come up a few times is producer bloat.

• 1:02:52Andy Greenwald?

  For sure.

• 1:02:52Chris Ryan?

  And getting, you know, one of the issues with like getting all these superstars to do stars, to make your shows with you on Apple or wherever, is they all get EP credits and their production shingle gets there. So their producing partner gets an EP credit. I'm not saying these people don't work hard on these shows or that they.

• 1:03:09Andy Greenwald?

  But, but there's a misconception that like, oh, this actor is an EP, meaning, well, it means two things. It means many things, but it, it can mean even more. But directly, it means, uh, they get the script circulated. They get access to the things that usually only producers get. When I say circulated, I mean, they see drafts. They don't just see the one that they're going to learn the lines from. But that also means that they get a second fee every episode for their second credit.

• 1:03:31Chris Ryan?

  Sometimes I watch movies from the 90s.

• 1:03:34Andy Greenwald?

  For no reason.

• 1:03:35Chris Ryan?

  And, uh, because perhaps I will podcast them about a pod that goes and watches films that we love.

• 1:03:40Andy Greenwald?

  It's called Second Timers.

• 1:03:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, no, but like I was watching a movie recently that was an action film and it's shot in location in Los Angeles. And you're just like, so was, were we talking 750, $750 million to make this? And you're like, no, it was 70 million or whatever it is. You know what I mean? And it, that is a huge action movie. I don't totally understand outside of inflation, how things have gotten out of control. Do you think that some of it is these above the line costs of?

• 1:04:08Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:09Chris Ryan?

  Once we get through, everybody gets a piece and everybody gets a taste, like each episode is pretty expensive with all this stuff?

• 1:04:16Andy Greenwald?

  There are so many ways to answer this question, and I'd like to do my best to hit a few of them. And if I'm not making sense or if I'm being unclear, tell me. But specifically to your point, there's no question that it, it is a level of advanced watching to try to understand where the money is spent. Because, and I'm not necessarily that good at it. I, we loved the show, um, The Rise and Fall of Reggie Dinkins, which is the NBC sitcom with Tracy Morgan and Daniel Radcliffe. And one of my, maybe I even said on the podcast, was it's so great to see the 30 Rock team still able to do it and get these just god tier jokes off, even though the reduced budgets of network shows means that they shoot the entire thing in two days in a disused New Jersey McMansion. And someone.

• 1:04:59Chris Ryan?

  And, and shoot it handheld.

• 1:05:00Andy Greenwald?

  Like literally, it's in a white box. And you watch 30 Rock, which I've been doing a little bit more of recently, and you see that they're, not just in 30 Rock, I mean, they shot in Queens, but they're on the streets of New York, blah, blah, blah.

• 1:05:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:11Andy Greenwald?

  And there are a lot of like more of the sort of Simpsons-esque cutaways to other places. And someone pointed out to me that yes, certainly margins have fallen, but also look how many EPs there are. And not just EPs, like Tracy Morgan is an EP, but also you have to service the long time deal that Tina Fey and Robert Carlock has. And like, that's sometimes where the money goes. And you don't always see it on screen. The other thing is that, like, obviously the industry has changed radically. And there was a time when you could take a risk by putting up money, being a financier or producer on something, with the understanding that there would be a long tail.

• 1:05:49Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:05:50Andy Greenwald?

  There are many people who got very rich on like VHS, the VHS boom or the, or whatever, because they knew that. And then, you know, the most famous example of the non-writing producer success story would be Castle Rock. The late Rob Reiner and his, his pals, um, in the 90s, made everything from Rob Reiner's movies to Seinfeld.

• 1:06:09Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:06:10Andy Greenwald?

  And they were able to do it because the TV business was built so that A, networks had to buy outside of themselves. They could not, NBC couldn't buy from NBC Studios or Universal Studios. So there were all these independent studios that sprung up to sell to everyone, and they did. But also, if you struck oil, that well pumped for a long time. And Castle Rock and its inheritors are still making money off of Seinfeld, because every few years the rights come up again. That door closed, both those doors closed in the last few years. Like, the, the laws changed in the 90s so that studios and networks could self-deal. So the, the middle producers started to go away. And then two, streamers meant that it was a closed ecosystem.

• 1:06:52Andy Greenwald?

  So you weren't going to sell it again. So the ceiling fell for the potential success of a lot of these big shows. So in talking to people about this, you realize that like the non-writing producer role, especially now as even the margins have even shrunk for, like, the shingles having overall deals themselves. Meaning, like, right now, like Seth MacFarlane's company, Fuzzy Door, had a, I imagine, rich overall deal with Universal.

• 1:07:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:18Andy Greenwald?

  Meaning Universal just pays them. And when they make stuff, it goes to Universal. They don't make stuff, they get paid anyway.

• 1:07:22Chris Ryan?

  Well, sometimes, like in GJ Abrams with Warner Brothers case, he gets a lucrative, I think, record-breaking deal with Warner Brothers, but is still making things for Paramount and is still making things for, you know, other networks. And then his actual Warner Brothers output was quite limited.

• 1:07:39Andy Greenwald?

  And then in post-strike, a lot of those deals were downshifted to first look deals, meaning they're getting paid a little bit of money, uh, but not nearly as much guaranteed. And then they have, they bring their stuff that to, to market to the people who are paying them that little bit first.

• 1:07:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:55Andy Greenwald?

  The other thing that's hard for producers, like, and I do worry about our dear Reese Witherspoon, how's she gonna make it?

• 1:08:00Chris Ryan?

  I mean, she, she, among all of us, is maybe the most voracious reader.

• 1:08:04Andy Greenwald?

  That is true.

• 1:08:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:05Andy Greenwald?

  Producers' fees don't kick in until you're in production. So there's a lot of work and labor put into it before you even get to the finish line. So, anyway, one way that they make money now is that, um, because the episode orders have shrunk so intensely, that the amount of money that producers are getting paid per episode has grown considerably.

• 1:08:26Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:08:27Andy Greenwald?

  So that you're getting paid for six or eight episodes more than people used to get paid for 22 episodes potentially, if you were a producer. The other way you do it is they, because these guys are all, they're still gonna get paid. Like, they're, I'm not, you know, you know, people, the Reese Witherspoons of the world, whether they sell to hedge fund capital or they approach the business differently, they're still gonna find ways to get paid. It's often in what's known as points. People talk about like, oh, how many points do I get on this show? Points on the backend or whatever? I used to think that meant purely residuals. And all the streamers do have internal opaque metrics being like, well, you were in our top 10, so you're getting a bonus or a payout. Apparently, a lot of those points are held by the producers and non-writing producers, and they get them based on renewals.

• 1:09:10Andy Greenwald?

  So they will find a way to get more money on top of the old money if the show gets renewed.

• 1:09:15Chris Ryan?

  Right, which is an interesting way to look at Apple's dedication to keeping things in, you know, we're out doing season four of this now, season five of this.

• 1:09:25Andy Greenwald?

  They're committed to doing it, and like a rich company like Apple, if they want to buy something, they will, from a studio, an outside studio, it's not just that they're reimbursing the studio for how much it costs to make the show, they're paying them on top of it.

• 1:09:37Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 1:09:37Andy Greenwald?

  For the right to buy.

• 1:09:38Chris Ryan?

  So when they buy, they buy Ted Lasso from Warner Brothers, right?

• 1:09:42Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:43Chris Ryan?

  Okay, that's interesting.

• 1:09:44Andy Greenwald?

  But it's also why Netflix doesn't renew things very often, very, for very long.

• 1:09:49Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:09:49Andy Greenwald?

  Because it cuts down on those ballooning costs.

• 1:09:52Chris Ryan?

  You know, and I also don't know whether or not, maybe you would know, but like, for instance, like, there's this TNT show with the late Eric Dane starring in it called The Last Ship, which was on.

• 1:10:02Andy Greenwald?

  I remember that.

• 1:10:03Chris Ryan?

  For several years and was often like, you'd see advertisements.

• 1:10:06Andy Greenwald?

  Charles Parnell was in that show.

• 1:10:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it was or is the number one show on Netflix.

• 1:10:10Andy Greenwald?

  That's so crazy.

• 1:10:11Chris Ryan?

  And this also happened with Suits, where I don't, we didn't really talk to Patrick Adams when he came on about this, but whether or not there is some windfall when there is like a streaming pop for your show.

• 1:10:23Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:23Chris Ryan?

  If it wasn't built into your original deal or whatever, you know what I mean? So I don't know whether the producers of The Last Ship got some huge check because it became the most streamed show on Netflix for a month.

• 1:10:35Andy Greenwald?

  We don't know if they participate in the success.

• 1:10:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:37Andy Greenwald?

  I don't know the answer to that. I imagine if they had any points or whatever on the show itself, when the show is sold to a streamer, they should participate in that, unless there's funny math, or they're like, well, actually, you still owe us from the whatever you didn't do, and so we're making good on your contract. But, but the success thing, I think, is a whole other conversation, and I would imagine, because people are always trying to find those little loopholes, that there, that there's deal language now being written, being like, in the event of a surprise resurrection, you know, on the Paramount Warner Brothers Disney Maytag washing machine service, like, you will get to participate in that.

• 1:11:15Chris Ryan?

  Two last questions, they're both a little bit longer. One is an Andy question. Jamie writes, I worked in film production for several years before switching gears and going to law school, congratulations. I also have a degree in film studies where the curriculum tended to focus on auteur theory and obviously a more intellectual, critical study of the art form. When I graduated from college and went to work in production, most of that critical theory, thinking, and especially auteur theory, changed on day one, when I saw the, how the sausage was made, by dozens to hundreds of people, and that the final product was mostly dependent on availability, budget, lighting, schedules, and logistics, understanding that, yes, the directors are people who set the tones, yada, yada. Before Andy started working in film production, I noted that he understandably approached TV criticism from a more critical studies vantage point.

• 1:11:59Chris Ryan?

  As soon as Andy got back from his first TV show gig, the discussions totally changed, and I vividly remember him talking about how many people make so many decisions that go into a final product, and being excited that we were unlocking a more lived-in experience and different perspective than had previously been shared on the pod. Andy, did you recognize this change in your approach to considering film and TV? And if so, can you identify how you evaluate projects now versus before your entry into the business?

• 1:12:26Andy Greenwald?

  Wow, what a close read. Thank you, Jamie. Well, I would say that when I was a critic officially at Granland, like, one of the things that I did try to do that felt, not, certainly not unique, but that I thought was important to do, was to try to consider an awareness of the business in addition to the business of art. Not saying that I had unique insight into it, but actually not doing so much of what he says as like, you know, the new critical, the text is everything, but understanding that, that the, the, the work still had to get squeezed through the machinery around it, and that would affect how we saw it, what we got to see of it, whether it got to continue or not.

• 1:13:06Andy Greenwald?

  But without question, once I got to go on the other side of it, the, something, I never believed that people intentionally tried to make something bad, but I don't think I understood the ways in which even the most well-intentioned things can come out wrong.

• 1:13:19Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:13:19Andy Greenwald?

  And then what can be done about that. And I certainly didn't understand the like, the spree decor that is necessary at every step along the way, and why things go bad, even from well-intentioned things, is really often comes down to probably very relatable mistakes in almost any field, which is really mistakes of communication. Or lack of communication. So there definitely was an evolution, and it's also why I kind of stopped saying I was a critic, even though I still come on here and say things like Deadpool and Wolverine was an obscenity, so apologies for that. Yeah, in terms of how it's changed, I mean, I don't believe that you need to have done the thing to be a critic.

• 1:14:00Andy Greenwald?

  I don't believe that, and I think the criticism is incredibly important and valuable, but I do think that there is a long tradition of things like, oh, God, Lillian Ross's book Picture, I talked about recently, NYRB has that as well, and it was basically came from a series of New Yorker articles she wrote about John Huston trying to make a movie.

• 1:14:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:20Andy Greenwald?

  And what's so interesting about that is that, like, she learned so much about what ended up being a disaster by actually being there, and of course, we don't get that kind of access anymore. It didn't make her less of a critic, and it didn't make her more of an apologist, but she kind of under, you could start to, instead of just guessing about some of the emotional intentions of things, you can actually see how pure idea, pure genius, pure emotion, pure vision, has to, has to get distorted by it becoming a collective project.

• 1:14:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:49Andy Greenwald?

  In ways that can be good and elevating, and in ways that can be kind of ruinous and destructive.

• 1:14:53Chris Ryan?

  I try to check my language about this stuff more than anything. You know, there are certain shows where it becomes very easy to fall back into like, Tony Gilroy did this, or Christopher Storr did that, and it's like, you're referring to something about production design, and like, what Luke Hull did on Andor.

• 1:15:13Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, for sure.

• 1:15:14Chris Ryan?

  Or you're referring to something about cinematography, or you're referring to an acting choice that might have been essentially ad-libbed or improvised, but you're attributing it to like, something that came out of final draft, you know? And that's, I think that's difficult. In, in some ways, I'm speaking in a code when I'm saying that. I'm saying like, the artisans and artists who decided to make this show presented me with this, and as shorthand, I maybe sometime ascribe choices made to one person, when it in fact was a collective decision, or perhaps it was a note from the studio, or maybe it was bad light that day, so they had to go inside, and that's why it kind of feels a little bit more drab. Like, I understand, like, ultimately, I think you can just do the best you can, and I think

• 1:15:58Chris Ryan?

  in the long tale of history, like, we'll think about things more in terms of their authors rather than their collective productions.

• 1:16:07Andy Greenwald?

  But this goes back to the conversation we had a moment ago about theme songs, because it is absolutely a collective process to make anything in this town, and I think the very best creators are very, very forthright about knowing what they don't know, and knowing what they get from everyone else's expertise and bringing them into the fold. But the buck does stop somewhere in terms of decision-making, and so like, I always say, not always, but like, among the many first-timer mistakes that I made running a show, the biggest one was not understanding my episodic budget when it came to having a big action piece episode. And so I was encouraged to write as big as I could, and then we got there, and it's like, oh, you have the same budget as Suits, even though you've written something that

• 1:16:50Andy Greenwald?

  requires like, multiple armed men storming a compound outdoors at night over four days. So what happens then is a process, and a collaborative process, of reducing, of reducing and reducing. And I think what ended up on the screen, you could watch and be like, oh, that was a really unimaginative set deck that day.

• 1:17:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:07Andy Greenwald?

  Or, boy, they really didn't get that shot, or they didn't light that very well or whatever. But all of that stemmed from my mistake in putting people in a position where they were trying to make up for something rather than trying to create something. So it is a, but it's a delicate, delicate balancing act, and like, when we had Kiro Marai and Katie Dipold on, you know, it was noticeable and really refreshing that they talked about that relationship, where they were talking about like Rosemary's home in the finale, how it was a labor of love for everyone working in props to build that and set deck and art direction and production design. And what goes unsaid when they're saying it is someone, in that case, Kiro and Katie, setting the tone so that they understood what, what muse to chase to get it done.

• 1:17:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:52Andy Greenwald?

  It's a really delicate thing, but like, but that's, beginning to not understand it, but appreciate that kind of dance is probably the best thing that I got out of the whole experience, and continue to get.

• 1:18:02Chris Ryan?

  Our final question comes from a listener named Trace, who wrote this a few weeks ago, so he is writing in the aftermath of us talking about Dark Wizard. Last week, after hearing you guys rave about The Dark Wizard, I put it on as a weekend watch. I was a big Hundred Foot Wave fan, another watch recommendation that really landed for me, and was expecting a cool bit of extreme sports documentary filmmaking with an interesting weirdo at the center, a bit more like the latter's relationship to Garrett. What I wasn't expecting was a show that would resonate with me quite as intensely as Dark Wizard did. I found it one of the more emotionally charged pieces of filmmaking I have ever seen about the experience of loving a difficult person. I've both loved and lost difficult people throughout my life, and been that difficult person for others, and while I've never free solowed anything beyond a flight of stairs,

• 1:18:46Chris Ryan?

  it was that rare moment where a work of filmmaking reflects experiences and unlocked emotions in a way that I think on some level, anyone who loves this stuff enough to listen to your podcast or the big picture regularly, is always seeking. Oftentimes, the watch engages with television through the lens of personal taste and critical capital, but I don't think we often hear you guys talk about television that hits you in a specific way, and perhaps that's understandable, is talking about your personal lives on a popular podcast, and it's moderately popular, isn't something that you owe anyone. Still, if you're comfortable answering the question, I'd love to hear about a TV show from any period of time in your life that resonated with you in this way on an emotional level, rather than a critical one. Thanks, guys. I do have a recent example of this.

• 1:19:26Andy Greenwald?

  Great.

• 1:19:27Chris Ryan?

  This is like, I'm not trying to bring the mood down, but.

• 1:19:30Andy Greenwald?

  Sure.

• 1:19:31Chris Ryan?

  The last episode of Euphoria. I, you know, didn't do, for a variety of reasons, a memorial service for my mother. And so, I don't know why, but the same gray scene at the end of Euphoria.

• 1:19:48Chris Ryan?

  Blew me up.

• 1:19:49Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:49Chris Ryan?

  And I think sometimes that's what jumps out is where you're like, it's not necessarily a one to one. I lost my mom. This show is about somebody loses their mom and it articulates all this stuff. It can be something where it's like, maybe there's something missing in your life. You see it on screen and it kind of like, you realize it was missing. Maybe there are words said that you wish you would said, but it was really strange. The Coleman Domingo scene at the end of Euphoria, like hit me like a lightning bolt.

• 1:20:20Andy Greenwald?

  I love that.

• 1:20:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's, it's very strange. I mean, obviously Coleman Domingo's character does some other things in the finale that I-

• 1:20:26Andy Greenwald?

  Which also struck you personally.

• 1:20:29Chris Ryan?

  But as a credit to that series, I thought that was just a really beautiful way to end it. And I thought it was, um, it, it just filled up some, something in me that was not, you know, maybe, maybe I hadn't unpacked.

• 1:20:43Andy Greenwald?

  I don't think I have anything quite like that. I think that for me, it is always, at least always, but in the last 13 years, it is parenting related. So, so to bring it full circle, like, like Bluey does do that for me because there's deep identification with what's going on there, but also just like, it's an extra level of emotion because of how and when I watch those episodes and who I watch them with. But more recently, it's been really amazing to watch things like specifically, my older daughter's interest in older movies. I find movies generally to be more emotionally impactful.

• 1:21:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:19Andy Greenwald?

  It's always hard to get anyone to watch anything that you really like and you have to be careful about it, I find.

• 1:21:24Chris Ryan?

  Who are you talking to?

• 1:21:25Andy Greenwald?

  People who matter a lot to you, who you've known for a long time.

• 1:21:28Chris Ryan?

  I'm sure as a parent, sharing your taste with your kids must be a very like electrified fence.

• 1:21:35Andy Greenwald?

  But it's a, it's a delicate balancing act. You don't want to be over, you don't want to push, but also you kind of want to bring in. And so a couple of months ago, when my older daughter wanted or agreed to watch the 91, 92 movie Eat, Drink, Man, Woman, which is a classic, but genuinely I love that movie.

• 1:21:53Chris Ryan?

  I thought you were going to say like Sneakers or something.

• 1:21:55Andy Greenwald?

  I did get them to watch Sneakers. They were, they were mixed on.

• 1:21:58Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:21:58Andy Greenwald?

  But like for whatever, she really likes movies with romance in it and there's some romance in it. And that movie is about a father who cooks meals for his children, which is pretty much 80% of what I think that I do. Um, don't really bring that into this podcast, but that's generally how I spend most of my time. And so there is that heightened, like when you put the cultural filter over it, you feel things more deeply than you're even aware that you're feeling. And is it because she's watching it with me? Is it because I wish I could cook elegant dim sum like that man can?

• 1:22:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:28Andy Greenwald?

  Or is it just that like, it allows you to sort of time travel and be the younger person who loved the movie for reasons that were deeply unexplored at the time and then connect that person with who you are now, with who that other person is becoming.

• 1:22:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:43Andy Greenwald?

  But I appreciate the question because that gets to the heart of something that is very, very difficult to articulate or communicate in a, on a podcast because it's very personal.

• 1:22:53Chris Ryan?

  I think you're also obscuring the fact that you, you also get quite moved when they ask the original lioness why she wanted to be a marine.

• 1:23:01Andy Greenwald?

  What did she say?

• 1:23:02Chris Ryan?

  Uh, that she was protected by one once. And he's like, then you know exactly what it means to be a marine.

• 1:23:08Andy Greenwald?

  Is that what it's going to be like when someone asks my daughter why she wants to drive her kids 20 minutes to school every day? And she's like, because someone did that for me?

• 1:23:17Chris Ryan?

  Thanks to Kaya, thanks to Kai, thanks to Sarah for producing. We will be back. So this is airing Monday. We have a special airing on Thursday, which is our tribute to Anthony Bourdain, which I, you know, we've done several of them over the course of this podcast, but with the release of Matt Johnson's Tony, starring Dominic Sessa, I think, believe August 7th, I believe, we decided we would take a trip through memory lane and down memory lane and check out some of his television work, try to build a hall of fame of episodes and also talk about some of the books that have been written about him since his passing and his legacy. So very excited to do, for people to hear that. And we'll be back to regularly scheduled programming on August 10th.

• 1:24:00Andy Greenwald?

  This was, can we do more mailbags? We don't do them enough.

• 1:24:03Chris Ryan?

  I, I felt like this was a really good one.

• 1:24:04Andy Greenwald?

  Really good. Thank you, listeners. And thank you. I hope you enjoy Bluey on your flight.

• 1:24:09Chris Ryan?

  All 15 minutes of it.